It was Kleffmann himself who answered my tap. He came to the back door and peered nervously out into the night. “Herr Kleffmann!” I called softly. “It’s me—Fraser. Gan we come in?”
“Ja. Kommen Sie herein. Hurry please.” As he stood back to let us through the door he turned his face towards the lamplight that came through from the kitchen. He looked startled, almost scared.
“Is he all right?” I asked.
“Your friend? Yes, he is all right. A little better, I think.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “We’ve got a truck waiting down on the road,” I said. “This is Fraulein Meyer.”
He shook hands with Else. “Come in. Come in, both of you.” He shut the door quickly and led us through into the kitchen. “Mutter. Here is Herr Fraser back again.”
Frau Kleffmann greeted me with a soft, eager smile, but her eyes strayed nervously to the stairs that led up from the kitchen. “I do not understand,” she murmured uneasily in German. Then she turned to her husband and said, “Why do they both come?”
I started to explain Else’s presence and then I stopped. That wasn’t what she had meant. Lying across the back of a chair was a heavy, fleece-lined flying jacket. Else had seen it, too. I turned to the Kleffmanns. They were standing quite still, staring towards the dark line of the stairs. From above us out of the silence of the house, came the sound of footsteps. They were coming down the stairs.
Else gripped my arm. “What is it?” she whispered.
I couldn’t answer her. My gaze was riveted to the stairs and all the muscles of my body seemed frozen in dread of the thing that was in my mind. The footsteps were heavy now on the bare boards of the landing. Then they were coming down the last flight. I saw the boots first and then the flying suit and followed the line of the zip to his face. “Saeton!” The name came from my lips in a whisper. God! I’ll never forget the sight of his face. It was grey like putty and his eyes burned in their sockets. He stopped at the sight of us and stood staring at me. Eyes and face were devoid of expression. He was like a man walking in his sleep.
“How’s Tubby?” My voice was hoarse and grating.
“He’s all right,” he answered, coming on down into the kitchen. “Why did you have to come here?” His voice was flat and lifeless and it carried with it a terrible note of sadness.
“I came to get him out,” I said.
He shook his head slowly. “It’s no use now.”
“What do you mean?” I cried. “You said he was all right. What have you done to him?”
“Nothing. Nothing that wasn’t necessary.”
I started towards the stairs then, but he stopped me. “Don’t go up,” he said. And then slowly he added, “He’s dead.”
“Dead?” The shock of the word drove me to action. I thrust past him, but he caught me by the arm as I started up the stairs. “It’s no good, Neil. He’s dead, I tell you.”
“But that is impossible!” Frau Kleffmann had retreated towards her chair by the fire. “Only this morning the doctor is here and he say he will be well again. Now you say he is dead.”
Saeton pushed his hand across his eyes. “It—it must have been a stroke—heart or something,” he muttered uncertainly.
“But only this evening he is laughing and joking with me,” Frau Kleffmann insisted. “Is not that so, Frederick?” she asked her husband. “Just before you come. I take him his food and he is laughing and saying I make him so fat he live up to his name.”
“Where is he?” Else whispered to me.
“Up at the top of the house. An attic. I’ll go up and see what’s happened.”
I started up the stairs again, but Saeton blocked my way. “He’s dead, I tell you. Dead. Going and looking at him won’t help.”
I stared at him. The blackness of the eyes, the smallness of the pupils—the man seemed curled up inside himself and through the windows of those eyes I looked in on fear and the bitter, driven urge of something that had stepped out of the world’s bounds. In sudden panic I flung him aside and leaped up the stairs. There was a small lamp on the landing and I picked it up as I turned to climb to the attic.
The door of Tubby’s room was ajar and as I went in the lamplight picked out the photographs of Hans lining the walls. My eyes swung to the bed in the corner and then I stopped. From the tumbled bedclothes Tubby stared at me with fixed and bloodshot eyes. His face had a bluish tinge even in the softness of the lamplight. There was a froth of blood on his puffed lips and his tongue had swollen so that it had forced itself between his teeth. He had struggled a great deal before he had died, for in the wreck of the bed his body lay in a twisted and unnatural attitude.
Avoiding the fixed gaze of his eyes, I crossed the room and touched the hand that had reached clear of the bed and was hanging to the floor. The flesh was still warm.
Else came into the room then and stopped. “So! It is true.” She looked across at me with a shudder. “How does it happen?”
“Perhaps it was a stroke. Perhaps——” My voice trailed away as I saw her eyes fasten on something that lay beside the bed.
“Look!” She shivered slightly, pointing to the pillow.
I bent and picked it up. It was damp and torn and bloody at the centre where Tubby had fought for air. The truth of how he had died was there in my hands.
“He did it,” she whispered. “He killed him.”
I nodded slowly. I think I had known it all along. Tubby’s wasn’t the face of a man who had died a natural death. Poor devil! Alive he had threatened the future of Saeton’s engines. Because of that Saeton had come all the way from Berlin to kill him, to smother him as he lay helpless on the bed. The force that had been driving Saeton all along had taken him to the final and irrevocable step. He had killed the man without whom the engines could never have been made, the one man whom he’d thought of as a friend. If one man stood between me and success, I’d brush him aside. I could remember how he had stood in the centre of the mess room at Membury and said that—and now he had done it. He had brushed Tubby aside. I dropped the pillow back on to the floor with a feeling of revulsion.
“I think he is mad.” Else’s horrified whisper voiced my own thoughts. And at that moment I heard slow, heavy footsteps on the stairs. Saeton was coming back up to the attic. I wasn’t prepared to face him yet. I reached for the door, closing it, my action unreasoned, automatic. I slid the bolt home and stood there, listening to the footsteps getting nearer.
“Come away from the door,” Else whispered urgently.
I stepped back and as I looked at her I saw she was scared.
The footsteps stopped outside the door and the handle turned. Then the thin deal boards bulged to the pressure of the man whose breathing I could hear. The room was very still as we waited. I think Else thought he would break the door down. I don’t know what I expected, all I knew was that I didn’t want to talk to him. The silence in the room was heavy with suspense. Then his footsteps sounded on the stairs again as he went slowly down.
I opened the door and listened. There was the murmur of voices and then the side door closed with a bang. From the window I saw Saeton, looking big and squat in his flying jacket, cross the farmyard and go out through the gate by the barn. I felt relieved that he had left. It wasn’t only that I didn’t want to talk to him. I was scared of him. Perhaps Else’s fear was infectious, but I think it would have come, anyway. The abnormal in its most violent form is a thing all sane men are afraid of. The initiative lies with the insane. It’s that which is frightening.
I turned back to the door. “I’ll get Kleffmann,” I said. “We must get his body down to the truck and take it back to Berlin.” Tubby’s sightless eyes watched me in a fixed stare. I turned quickly and went down the stairs, conscious of Else’s footsteps hurrying after me.
The kitchen looked just the same as when we had entered it. Frau Kleffmann sat huddled in her thick dressing-gown by the fire. Her husband paced nervously up and down. There was nothing in the warmth and
friendliness of that room to indicate what had happened upstairs in the attic—only the tenseness. Frau Kleffmann looked up quickly as I entered. “Is it true?” she asked. “Is he dead?”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s dead.”
“It is unbelievable,” she murmured. “And he was such a nice, friendly man.”
“Why did that other man—Herr Saeton—leave so quickly?” Kleffmann demanded.
I could see that he was suspicious, but there seemed no point in telling him what had happened. “He was worried about his plane,” I said. “Will you help me get Carter’s body down? We are taking it back to Berlin.”
“Ja.” He nodded. “Ja, I think that is best.”
“Would you please find something for us to carry him on?” I asked Frau Kleffmann.
She nodded, rising slowly to her feet, a little dazed by what had happened.
“You stay here, Else,” I said and followed Kleffmann up the stairs to the attic again. We covered Tubby with a blanket and got his body down the steep, narrow stairs. Back in the kitchen Else and Frau Kleffmann had fixed a blanket over two broom handles. The improvised stretcher lay on the table and we put Tubby’s body on it. Frau Kleffmann began weeping gently at the sight of his shrouded figure. I think she was remembering her son out there in a Soviet labour camp.
Else stood quite still, staring down at the shape huddled under the blanket.
“Will you help us to carry him down to the truck?” I asked Kleffmann.
“Ja. It is better that you take him away from here.” His voice trembled slightly and the sweat shone on his forehead. He had known as soon as he’d seen Tubby that the poor devil hadn’t died naturally and he wanted to get the body out of his house, to be shot of the whole business. He hadn’t said anything, but he knew who had done it and he was scared.
We picked the stretcher up, he at one end, I at the other. “Come on, Else,” I said.
She didn’t move and as I lifted the latch of the door she said, “Wait!” Her voice was pitched high on a hysterical note. “Do you think Saeton will let you go back to Berlin with—with that.” She came across the room, seizing hold of my arm and shaking it in the extremity of her fear. “He cannot let either of us go back.”
I stood still, staring at her, the truth of what she was saying gradually sinking in.
“He is waiting for us—out there.” She jerked her arm towards the window.
I could see in her eyes that she was still remembering the sight of Tubby’s face as he lay propped up in that bed. I lifted the stretcher back to the table and went towards the window. My hand was on the curtains to pull them back when Else seized my arm. “Keep away from the window. Please, Neil.” I could feel the trembling of her body.
I turned irresolutely back into the room. Was he really waiting for us out there? The palms of my hands were damp with sweat. Saeton had never turned back from anything he had started. He wouldn’t turn back now. Else and I were as fatal to him as a hangman’s rope. A desperate feeling of weariness took hold of me so that my limbs felt heavy and my movements were slow. “What do we do then?”
Nobody answered my question. They were all staring at me, waiting for me to make the first move. “Have you got a gun here?” I asked Kleffmann.
He nodded slowly. “Ja. I have a shot gun.”
“That will do,” I said. “Can I have it please?”
He went out of the room and returned a moment later with the gun. It looked about the equivalent of an English 16 bore. He gave it to me together with a handful of cartridges. “I’ll go out by a window on the other side of the house,” I said. “When I’ve gone, keep the doors bolted.” I turned to Else. “I’ll circle the house and then go down to the road and persuade Kurt to bring the truck up here.”
She nodded, her lips compressed into a tight line.
“If I find it’s all clear, I’ll whistle a bit of the Meistersingers. Don’t open up until you hear that.” I turned to Kleffmann. “Have you got another gun?”
He nodded. “I have one I use for the rooks.”
“Good. Keep it by you.” I broke the gun I held in my hands and slipped a cartridge into each of the barrels. I felt like a man going out to finish off an animal that has run amok.
As I snapped the breech Else caught hold of my hand. “Be careful, Neil. Please. I—I do not know what I shall do if I lose you now.”
I stared at her, surprised at the intensity of feeling in her voice. “I’ll be all right,” I said. And then I turned to Kleffmann and asked him to show me to the other side of the house.
X
I DROPPED OUT near some bushes and slid into their shadow. Overhead the stars still shone, bright and cold, but to the west the sky was black with cloud. The wind seemed warmer now. I pulled my coat round me and slid along the wall of the house, ran past the gate to the farmyard and crouched in the shadow of the barn. I stood there, quite still, the barrel of the gun cold on the palm of my left hand, listening to the sounds of the night. One by one I identified them—the wind tapping the branch of a tree against the wooden side of the barn, a cow moving in its stall, the grunt of a pig, the tinkle of ice knocked from some guttering by the flutter of an owl. And over all these sounds the solid thumping of my heart.
I tried to tell myself that I was a fool to be standing out there, scared of every shadow that seemed to move, waiting with a gun in my hand. But every time I nearly convinced myself that I was being a fool, the memory of Tubby’s face came to remind me that Saeton was now a killer. For a long time I stood quite still with my back against the wood of the barn, hoping that somewhere in the darkness round me I should hear a sound, see a movement that would prove he was really there. I longed to know, to end the suspense of waiting. But nothing stirred.
It was out of the question for me to stand there doing nothing till dawn. Kurt was waiting down on the road and he would not wait much longer. The thing to do was to go down there and get the truck up. If he left without us … The memory of that other journey into Berlin spurred me to action.
Moving warily I slid along the wall of the barn, past a piled-up heap of manure, through a litter of decaying farm machinery. A twig snapped under my feet. I stepped in a rut where the water was all frozen and the ice crunched under my weight. They were only little noises, but they sounded loud, and once away to the left, I thought I heard an answering movement. But when I stopped there was nothing but the sounds I had already identified.
I circled the farm without seeing any sign of Saeton. Then I started down the track to the road. I kept well clear of the ruts, moving slowly along the grass verge, brambles tearing at my trousers.
And then suddenly, out of the darkness ahead, the beam of a torch stabbed the night. As the dazzle of it touched my eyes I flung myself sideways. But I wasn’t quick enough. There was a spurt of flame and the bullet thudded into my body, knocking me off my feet and sending me sprawling into the brambles that bordered the track. Boots crunched in the frozen ruts as the beam of the torch probed my shelter. I lifted the shot gun and fired at the torch. The kick of the gun wrenched me with pain, but the torch went out and above the sound of the shot I heard a cry. I fought my way through the thicket, the thorns tearing at my face and hands, all the right side of my body racked with pain. Behind the screen of brambles I crouched down and very gently ejected the spent shell and reloaded. My right hand had no strength in it. The fingers were stiff and clumsy and the cartridges sticky with blood. The click of the catch as I closed the breech seemed unnaturally loud in the stillness that had descended on the lane.
My eyes had been momentarily dazzled by the torch, but as they became accustomed to the darkness again I saw the line of the brambles bordering the track, and on either side of me and behind me the slope of the ground was visible against the stars. I was in a slight hollow. If he tried to circle me I should see him against the stars. The danger lay to my immediate front. The strange thing was that now I knew he was there and was at grips with him I was no longer afrai
d.
Away to my left on the main road the engine of a truck broke the silence, headlights cut a swathe through the night and began to move. Frightened by the shots Kurt was pulling out, leaving us to find our own way back to Berlin. I cursed under my breath as I listened to the sound of the engine dying away. Soon all that remained was a faint glow in the darkness to the south. Then that, too, was gone. The wind rustled in the brambles. A night bird cried its call. There was no other sound.
Then something moved in the bushes to my left. It moved again, nearer this time. I raised the gun to my shoulder. There was the sound of earth being dislodged and the rattle of dry bramble branches almost at my side. I fired at the sound. From behind me, echoing the sound of my own shot, the revolver smacked a bullet into the ground at my feet. I swung round, realising how he’d fooled me by throwing earth into the undergrowth. I saw his figure crouched against the stars and let off my second barrel at it. There was a grunt and a curse as something thudded to the ground. Desperately I broke my gun and fumbled in my pocket for the cartridges.
When the gun was loaded I started forward. I knew I had to finish it off now. If I didn’t I should lose my nerve. I sensed that in the trembling of my hands. I had to finish it one way or the other. Crouched low I could see his body close to the ground as he waited for me. Whatever happened now I was close enough for the shot gun to be effective. I steeled myself to the jolt of a bullet hitting me. I’d let him have both barrels. Wherever he got me I’d still have time to fire.
But I didn’t have to. Even when I was so close I could have blown the top of his head off he did not move. He was crouched in an unnatural position, his head bent almost to the ground, his fingers dug deeply into the hard earth. Beside him his torch glimmered faintly in the starlight. The chromium was all wet and sticky as I picked it up and when I flicked it on I saw the metal was badly dented and filmed with blood. I turned him over on to his back and as I did so his service revolver slipped from between his fingers. His left arm was all bloody, the hand horribly pitted by the shot. There was a livid bruise above his left temple and the skin had split. But apart from this he didn’t seem badly hurt and his breathing was quite natural. I think what had happened was that the main weight of my shot had struck the torch and flung it against the side of his head. There was no doubt that he’d been knocked clean out.
Air Bridge Page 28
